


Things Without All Remedy

by Lanyare



Series: What's Done Cannot Be Undone [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Introspection, Swearing, because taako, that pretty much covers it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-25 00:11:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13822380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lanyare/pseuds/Lanyare
Summary: In the aftermath of Wonderland, close to the ruin that was once Phandalin, two liches are left with entirely too much to think about in the darkness of night.





	1. Taako

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This starts off shortly after the end of The Prize of Our Own Survival, so you'll want to read that first for this to make sense.

"Hey."

Taako glances up sharply from his silent contemplation of the campfire, surprised to be interrupted. Usually the others are aware of when he doesn't really want to talk and will respect that (mostly), but...well, today has been an exception in a number of ways. Like, for example, the fact that he's now staring up at a wooden mannequin with one hand partially extended, like he wants to rest it on Taako's shoulder but doesn't quite think it's the best idea. "You okay?"

"Seems more like a question someone should be asking _you_ , my dude," Taako retorts, lifting a hand enough to gesture toward, well, all of what currently constitutes Magnus.

"Huh." Magnus actually seems to consider it for a moment, then shrugs as best as his body will let him. "I think everyone kinda realizes that things are shit for me in general right now. But you, I mean...that was rough, back in there. And I wanted to make sure you're handling things okay."

"Fine, fine. Good as ever." It's easier to lie if he's looking away, so Taako turns back toward the fire, leaning over to pick up a branch he can use to poke idly into the flames. "I mean, I'm out of spell slots and could use a long rest, but, y'know, kind of expected, right?"

"Taako…." Only silence follows for several moments. It could be that Magnus is uncertain just what to say, or maybe he's just trying to be polite and not outright say he knows the elf is lying. He finally goes with, "You know you can talk to me, if you ever need to. Right?"

"Or me," Merle chimes in, without bothering to lift his head from his pretense of dozing by the fire. As if anyone had been fooled and didn't think he was listening in (his Deception has never been his strong point, no matter how much the dwarf likes to think otherwise).

And then just to complete the weird tableau of People Trying To Be Helpful When It Isn't Wanted, Taako catches a glimpse of the Red Robe looking his direction, and for an instant thinks that maybe _he's_ going to add an offer of his own. Because yeah, liches tend to be really willing to offer listening ears. If they even have ears.

Of course...maybe it's because they have something in common now.

Taako turns an involuntary shudder into a pretense of a shiver, pulling his cloak closer about himself as though warding off a chill. "Right, right, got each others' backs and all that. Sure. But right now," he continues, feigning a yawn, "some rest sounds right up Taako's alley. You two can get your kumbaya-yas out if you want, but I'm off."

He tosses the stick he'd been toying with into the fire and rises, casually pretending not to notice that Magnus still has that hand outstretched toward him and Merle's eyes are open just enough to glitter in the firelight as he watches. It doesn't matter to him what they think. It doesn't matter if they're worried, because they shouldn't be. Not about _him_.

Even the Red Robe is still watching him, for whatever reason; creepier still, the extra non-Magnus mannequin the lich had saved from Wonderland is facing his direction. There's something weird about that thing at the best of times (or would be, since no good times have happened in the hours since they'd escaped, of course) and right now it's just skeeving the hell out of Taako. He doesn't know why the lich had saved it or what he plans for it, nor why it gives him a nausea-inducing headache to try to look at the thing for too long. Maybe lich-dom comes with a weird fetish for animated dolls. If so, Taako plans to nope the fuck out of _that_ one. Being an undead creature of arcane power? Sure. Wanting to bone haunted dolls? _Fuck_ no.

Whatever. They can do what they want. He's going to get some rest.

Except that once he settles down, he finds sleep elusive and meditation even more so. His mind simply won't shut itself off, turning and turning over the day's events and what tomorrow might bring and every single way in which he'd utterly fucked up and will likely do so again in the future. And then over all of that, there's the massive what-the- _fuck_ of "so I'm a lich now," because how exactly do you deal with that? It's not like it's something he'd planned to do, or should have done, or in any way should have known _how_ to do. He'd just on the spur of the moment decided to turn himself into a powerful undead creature in an attempt to somehow gain some kind of advantage in Wonderland, and then proceeded to turn it into a gigantic liability that might have killed everyone, if Magnus hadn't…

What exactly _did_ Magnus do, anyway? There's a weirdly distorted space in his memory there, likely due to the whole losing-control-and-nearly-destroying-himself bit, and it won't resolve itself into any sort of order no matter how much Taako prods at it.

He'd broken the Umbra Staff, sure, which maybe isn't the best way to endear himself to Taako, who's now left wielding a shitty beginner wand that does nothing for him. But why had Magnus done that? And _why_ had that seemed to help him gain enough control to go back into his body and let that anchor him?

Taako shudders again at that particular memory, for that had _not_ been a pleasant experience. It was like...like putting on a favorite comfortable outfit, only to find that it had shrunk and warped and now you're stuck because you can't quite reach the fastener to let yourself out. Like picking up a cut of meat you'd planned to make for dinner, only to find that it had gone rotten and it's slimy and squishes unpleasantly between your fingers. Like...like dying, in reverse. Only wrong.

And then that—

That only sends his thoughts down another, equally uncomfortable track.

Kravitz.

Kravitz _does not like liches_.

Memory replays crystal clear the aftermath of their date at the Chug n' Squeeze, when Kravitz had only thought that he'd sensed the presence of a lich. He'd only had a _suspicion_ that a lich was present, and he'd immediately gone all skeletal and scythed up. How, exactly, is he going to react when he finds that Taako, _Taako_ of all people, has joined the ranks of the evil undead?

It makes him ache uncomfortably, feeling hollow inside at the idea of Kravitz approaching him with scythe at the ready. He deserves it, he _deserves_ to be thrown into Death Jail for being such a fucking idiot that he'd given in to the vogue liches. But Kravitz—

Hell, maybe Kravitz won't mind as much as Taako thinks he will. They've only been dating for, what, a couple months? It's not like the reaper could really care _that_ much or think he's important or anything. Especially not when he's going around pulling stunts like violating the laws of life and death for no good reason.

So really, all he has to do is just avoid Kravitz entirely. It'll make things easier for the both of them, when he comes down to it, and—

Taako bites back a gasp, eyes flying open to stare in disbelief at the sparks arcing across his palms. Even with a body to anchor himself in he's shuddering, feeling like he's starting to come apart at the seams, moving dangerously close to losing control like he did earlier. He forces himself to focus, fists clenching and teeth gritting, focusing on control, control like he's a brand-new magic user all over again, control like there's nothing wrong at all and nothing to worry about. Control because if he doesn't find it and find it _now_ everyone is going to notice once again that he's nothing but a colossal failure of a wizard/lich.

By the time he's calmed himself, feels entirely contained within his own flesh once more, Taako halfway expects to hear Magnus's gruff concern, but this time— there's nothing. Only the quiet sounds of the forest around them, the snap and pop of wood on the fire, a faint murmur of the Red Robe's voice from the other side of the clearing, too low to be audible (and who is he talking to, anyway, the mannequin?). Maybe the others have gone to sleep after all.

Or...well, Magnus probably doesn't sleep right now. So he could be just keeping watch. Could be he's the one talking to the Red Robe— for some reason he seems to trust the weirdo, beyond just "he helped us out in Wonderland so I'll give him a chance".

Although, come to think of it, for some reason _Taako_ wants to trust him, too. Which is ridiculous, because Taako doesn't trust _anyone_ , especially not spectral beings who like to pop up and give weird creepy speeches about fear at random intervals.

Is it another symptom of lich-ness, maybe? Wanting to trust those who are like you?

No. Taako immediately rejects that notion, remembering Lydia and Edward and his feelings about _them_ entirely too well. He'd had absolutely no inclination to trust those fuckers, and if they even had graves he'd dance on them until the sun rose. Then stomp a few more times, just for good measure. So that can't be it.

Chalk it up with all the other weird things he's been thinking. Like, say, the vindictive glee he'd felt when the Red Robe destroyed their Stones of Farspeech, the unexpected and completely inexplicable rush of fury he'd felt toward the Director. He'd never had any reason to think of her as anything other than a boss — a particularly demanding and sometimes annoying boss, sure, but he'd never had any really strong feelings toward her before. But now? Now, he's angry with her. More than angry. And has no idea why.

 _Fuck_ , is being a lich frustrating. Or maybe it's just being Taako, an idiot wrapped in a shell of distrust and failure.

He squeezes his eyes closed again and grits his teeth until his jaw aches from it, trying to force his mind down the familiar pathways toward meditation. Rest is what he needs. Rest and renewed spell slots, for from what the Red Robe has hinted at, he's going to need them for tomorrow.

Hopefully tomorrow will make more sense than today.


	2. Lup

"I'm just having a hard time wrapping my head around this whole thing," Lup admits, watching the trio sitting around the campfire a short distance away. Here she is, reunited with her friends, her _family,_ and they don't even know her. It's unnatural, even painful to sit here and just watch her brother without going over to him, to hold him and talk to him and try to recover the years that have separated them. But...well. Here she is.

She can't help but feel responsible for this whole mess, at least in part. If she hadn't gone off in search of the Gauntlet, would Lucretia still have done what she did? And even if she had, then at least she might not have separated Lup and Taako, leaving him so utterly alone. Lup _knows_ her brother, knows him so well others often thought the two of them shared a telepathic bond, and she can see at least some of the ways time has changed him— he's more like they were as children, longing to connect with someone but not trusting anyone enough to do so. More like she'd been told he was in the years he'd lived part of a cycle without her, more hostile, more caustic, reckless enough to try to _turn himself into a lich without a ready anchor_. He has new scars, inside and out, and it makes her blood boil, makes her want to track down those responsible and teach them how it feels to be hurt in turn.

Only the fact that he's with Magnus and Merle now makes her feel any better at all. Even set adrift as Barry has told her they were, the three of them still found each other. They still found _her_ , somehow, astonishingly, even if they hadn't realized it. They'd found _her_ and Taako had carried her umbrella at his side for over a year, giving her a chance to be with him in some measure, to help him the tiniest bit, even though none of them even knew or recognized her attempts to call to them.

Lup sees Barry's arm move and looks down to see he's resting his hand on hers— hands which are clenched tightly enough that she's halfway surprised that splinters aren't cracking off of them. With an inward sigh she forces herself to relax, lest she unnecessarily damage the body she's currently inhabiting.

 _"I don't know if it'll really work,"_ Barry had said, _"but we'll never get you past the wards in your lich form, so we have to try hiding you somehow."_

There hadn't been much time to explain further or come up with a better idea at the time, not with Wonderland crumbling apart around them, so Lup had grabbed one of the mannequins and Barry waved it off when the others asked, adding it to the list of things he promised to explain later. If they hadn't already been distracted by everything they'd already been through, Lup suspects that there would've been a lot more questioning and suspicion, but so far they'd gone along with Barry agreeably enough, for which she's grateful.

It had meant, after all, that he'd had a chance to explain everything to _her_ while the others dealt with setting up camp for the night. And that explanation was...a lot to take in. Enough that she'd let her thoughts drift while trying to absorb it all, understand it all, and even now she finds her attention shifting back toward Taako again, where he sits staring into the fire, expressionless enough that his own thoughts must be whirling as much as hers.

"It's just— _Lucretia_ did this? To them? To you?" Lup shakes her head slowly, lowering her eyes to their hands again. If only she could _feel_ him there, could actually touch him. In the past she'd never spent more than a few months in lich form at a time, but even that had come with some sense of touch. It wasn't the same as being in a physical body, of course, but it was _something_. It was far more than what she'd had while within the Umbra Staff, and being confined to this wooden body is uncomfortably more like a regression to _that_ than the freedom she'd experienced for that short time after being released.

Barry nods, his spectral hand closing a little tighter around her unfeeling one, as though he can tell the direction her thoughts are going and feels the same. "I don't think she meant to continue this for as long as she did. It seems to have gotten away from her, and instead of giving in and undoing it, she decided to be stubborn and dig in even farther."

"But there's so little _time_ left!" Frustration is building and Lup wants to scream, to act, to _do_ something more than just sit here and _watch_. She's out of that _fucking_ umbrella and still has to wait, confined in a different sort of shell for the time being, and in the meantime the Hunger is inevitably moving in on their plane. "How could she let it get so close? She has to know, and she waited to send them to Wonderland at the very last moment—"

"I know. I _know_ , Lup, but we can't change that now, all we can do is finish this." Barry looks away as Magnus's wooden form approaches Taako, apparently trying to see if the wizard wants to talk. "There'll be a lot to deal with, later. Right now I just want to make sure _later_ will actually happen."

Lup makes a quiet, frustrated sound, tired of patience and waiting and doing nothing. She has _years_ of imprisonment to work off, and here one of the first things she'd done was jump into a slightly less confining prison to sit around. Not the best thing for her, admittedly, even if there had been the necessity of it. At least now she can _see_ without expending a lot of effort, and she can interact— though not with her own _brother_ , thanks to Lucretia's use of Fisher. "This plan _is_ going to work," she says, hearing the tension in her own voice. "It'll work if I have to burn down the entire fucking moonbase to _make_ it work. We can't just let the Hunger attack when we don't even know where the Starblaster _is_."

Barry nods, then freezes in place when Taako looks over in their direction, his expression unreadable but with tension in the set of his shoulders. _Taako, Taako,_ Lup cries silently, watching her brother, her heart, as he moves away, setting up his bedroll for the night. _I wish I could talk to you, that you knew I'm here, with you…_

They'd had that time together, immediately after the Umbra Staff had been broken, time when she'd been able to hold him, reassure him, calm him, but for everyone's good he'd had to go back. He'd had to forget all over again, and she doesn't want to think about what that must have cost him. Taako has always been stronger than he thinks he is, though; Lup has often admired him for it while at the same time she'd been exasperated at how little he really believed in himself. It's part of why she'd been so alarmed when he'd agreed to the "sacrifice" those fucking liches had demanded— a lich without a solid sense of _self_ would be dangerous just on its own. And then compounded by his altered memory, which left him without the necessary ties to the strong emotions that would have kept him grounded? Well. Lup owes Magnus a debt for breaking the umbrella when he did.

As Lup sinks into her own thoughts once more the night grows still around the little campsite. Merle dozes off for real (she's fairly certain) and though Magnus for a time seems determined to keep watch, his head sags and his wooden body slumps in what looks like a posture of sleep.

She envies them, to tell the truth; the best she can manage as a lich is a semblance of a trance, which is nowhere near as appealing right now as a few hours of unconsciousness. Not the exhausted darkness she would fall into after expending too much energy inside the Umbra Staff, the loss of all senses for a time until she managed to recover again, but a true relaxed _sleep_ , where she could leave everything behind for a few hours and just _drift_...that's what she would really love.

And then _something_ alerts her, draws her attention to Taako — a sound, a movement, maybe just the finely-honed sense of her twin's presence — something that tells her that all is not right.

" _Barry_ ," she hisses, urgent and alarmed, reaching out a hand despite herself as Taako visibly trembles, sparks dancing across his limbs. This is wrong, this is _dangerous_ , if he can lose control even while housed within his body then—

But Barry is suddenly between her and her brother, blocking her sight of him and making her bite back a frustrated scream. "Wait. Lup, _wait,_ you can't go over there right now, not like this, it might make things even worse."

"But it's _Taako_ , I can't just—" She's on her feet again without consciously willing it, tense and aching to cross the distance between them.

"He can do it, Lup, he can. He has to. Believe in him."

His voice is firm enough, certain enough, that she hesitates, holds herself there for just a moment.

Stillness. Silence. Enough that Lup can hear Taako's breathing, tense and labored, but— no more than that. He's struggling, but he isn't losing the fight. Not yet. Not now.

Slowly, she forces herself to lower down to the log serving as her seat, though her hands remain clenched into fists on her lap. He's right. She hates it, but she knows he's right. If she were to go over there Taako wouldn't see _her_ , he'd see...something else, something that wouldn't bring him any comfort or support. Something that might even startle him enough to throw off his control entirely.

Barry shifts to be by her side again, doing his best to rest an arm around her shoulders, offering what comfort he can. _It must be rough for him, too_ , she reminds herself. He hadn't wanted to get into too much detail, but she can read between the lines of his story, see the years alone, searching and dying and searching again, the desperate and lonely hardship he had lived through. It had to have hurt, to know that Lucretia had turned him into the enemy, that he'd had to play that role (her dear nerd Barry, playing at a scary nightmare figure) in order to help and protect as best as he could.

He has to understand. He always has; he always cared so much about _everyone_ , often even more than himself.

Lup stares across the clearing at Taako, now that she can see him again, at his clenched fists and jaw, one arm thrown across his eyes to shield them, fighting his own inward battle...and winning. The sparks wink out and she sags a little with relief, wishing she had lungs with which to take a deep calming breath. _He can do it. He_ **_can_** _._

"It'll be okay, Lup," Barry murmurs, and she allows the sound of his voice to soothe her as it always does. "We'll protect them. We'll get their memories back. We'll be ready when the Hunger descends. It'll be okay. _We'll_ be okay."

"We can do it." Lup slowly nods, watching Taako open his eyes again— he's staring at nothing, his face so tense his head must be aching, but he's calmed and controlled even without her. She still aches to hold him, to whisper stories to him until he can sleep, to fall asleep in turn curled up against him like they're children again, but...but one more night, after _years_ of waiting, she can do this. They can do this. It will be all right.

But still, she can see again the rift to the astral plane that had been waiting to pull Magnus through before she'd drawn him away, the sight of the Hunger's unmistakable encroachment, and the figure desperately breaking through the surface of the unnaturally tainted sea. The figure she'd seen before, with her brother. The reaper who, she'd thought, had met her gaze for an instant through the rift, before she'd moved away again. A _reaper_.

_Oh, Taako. What will we do?_

Barry's soft voice continues. "Tomorrow. One way or another, it will all be finished tomorrow."


End file.
